TENDERLOVE COMMUNITY CENTER
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Mission Statement
TenderLove Community Center (TLCC) mission is to, empower, break cycles of poverty and improving the emotional and financial wellbeing of homeless women through programs that teach skills to enter or re-enter the job market after traumatic circumstances such as survival of domestic violence, previous incarceration, rape crisis. In a safe and supportive environment we offer 12 months of training and mentoring in marketable skills and reliable work habits. The curriculum takes students from simple projects such as aprons and pillows, to complex projects that they design and implement themselves. In addition to the curriculum we help women with a plethora of practical challenges such as transportation, food, finding safe housing, and connecting with needed community services. At the end of the program, students sew their own graduation gown, receive a new sewing machine, and qualify to work together as business owners in Sew4Real LLC. Our expected outcome is to help our students bring about self- discovery, grow in skill and quality of life, become self-supporting,and have stable housing.
About This Cause
As a result of our founder’s experience with homelessness as a formerly homeless person. Ms. Johnson recognized that though each woman’s circumstances might be different, there is a need for a program that does more than simply provide short term housing; assisting women to rise above their traumatic experiences, and building self-sufficiency by teaching sewing and life skills through a twelve-month program. TenderLove Community Center (TLCC) based in Albuquerque NM offers a free year-long training and mentoring program, teaching homeless and near-homeless women marketable life skills using sewing and fashion design as the platform. This is the kind of sustained support and mentoring needed to help homeless people escape from the cycle of poverty. Many TLCC students have also been victims of violence, incarcerated, and single parents. TLCC provides a safe place to be during weekdays, offers lunch and snacks, transportation, and practical supports. At graduation every woman receives a new sewing machine of her own, and as of 2017 students have the option to continue working together and earning income in a small cooperative business providing sewing, alterations, mending, and custom-made products. TLCC is now in its sixth year. We continue to gather follow-up data for the first 5 years of graduates and have documented that at least 98% are now in stable housing and 90% are employed, in school, or otherwise self-supporting. We are also implementing quarterly evaluation with students of Goal Attainment Scaling and quality of life. . Our 2-year expansion plan includes moving to a larger facility, providing housing for homeless women with or without children in the program, on-site child care, financial literacy, and training in additional marketable skills in culinary arts and supportive care of seniors and disabled individuals. In Dec 2018, we reached our goal of having our own facility which is way bigger than the previous one and would accommodate all our skills expansion. Each year TenderLove Community Center continues to advance its mission of empowering. Through our program, we have seen many lives changes for the better. We serve a diverse population of women, from all cultures, races and backgrounds. About 1/3 of our students are immigrants, others are Native American, Hispanic, African American, mixed race and Caucasian. The course is offered free to qualified women. Since not everyone is willing or able to sew, we have added Culinary Arts to our program for our 2017/18 program year, and will be adding other manual skills in the years to come. We also teach financial literacy through our collaboration with Nusenda Credit Union and refer our students to programs that teach GED and reading literacy. We teach skills to over 65 individuals per program year, even though our mission is to empower women, but we often render support for men whenever the need arises. We offer a safe day shelter to vulnerable women out on the streets when homeless shelters are closed. We feed warm lunches and sometimes breakfasts four days/week for women attending the program and have given out food for their families and other when available. We transport women to and from TenderLove’s facility and to and from other essential services by providing bus passes and sometimes gas money. We confer with social workers, case workers, jobs programs and temporary shelters on behalf of our students. We refer women (not just our regular students) to emergency housing and homeless services, financial guidance, legal guidance and social services. Two key indicators of program success are that after the one-year program, graduates will be living in stable housing (98% of graduates for the past 5 years) and will have self-supporting employment (90% of graduates to date). We do weekly and monthly skill progress evaluations during the program (96% of intended sessions are completed) and follow-up for two years to measure housing, employment, income, job satisfaction, and quality of life (using the World Health Organizations WHO-QuOL measure). We have also implemented an individualized Goal Attainment Scaling system that sets measurable goals for each student at admission and assesses the degree of goal attainment at follow-up points. We are a human services organization serving homeless and low-income, including Mental and Physical disabled, youth and single parents in the community. Although there are more than 30 organizations that provide help and support to the homeless population in our area, our program is the only one of its kind, meeting women’s life needs with free job training in a safe and comfortable community. Our program educate our clients individualized hands-on-learning and training opportunities through internships and earn-while-you-learn opportunities, including a small business (Sew 4 Real LLC) run by and for graduates of our program. We also provide job placement services and/or support setting up a small business enterprise to our clients who complete our training program.